Siberian squill and other blue flowers
We, the Ann Arbor branch of the cFam/FinFam families, had quite some discussion about blue wildflowers yesterday. We were calling some of them “bluebells”. I don’t think we have those around here. I think bluebells mostly grow in Texas and other places. These flowers are Siberian Squill and I think they are interlopers. Mouse (our plant expert) opines that a lot of blue flowers get called bluebells.
I am annoyed that I can’t watch Andy Griffith reruns again tonight. I turned the TV *off* two nights ago and can’t seem to turn it on again. I mean, it turns on but I can’t seem to find out how to manage the channels. When I push the channel arrows on the remote, I get an error message or nothing happens at all.
Sigh. Until I was two years old, we did not have a TV in our house in Sault Ste. Siberia. There were no channels in range of us. We listened to the radio. When I was two, Cananada got a CBC channel. We got a black and white TV and watched Howdy Doody (I can *barely* remember that) and Don Ramsey and his band, a local Soo Canada band. You turned the TV on and off, no remote and no need for one.
A number of years after that, we got channel 9 and 10, a CBS channel. So we had a few sit-coms at night (Beverly Hillbillies, etc.) and cartoons like Huckleberry Hound and Yogi Bear in the late afternoon. So two channels. You turned the TV on and off and switched the channel if you wanted. Still no remote and didn’t really need one.
Then one day I walked home from junior high and my little brother said, “Look at the TV.” We had cable! We had seven channels with that. I remember doing my homework in front of Lost in Space reruns. I sat at a card table in our little living room and ate oranges and potato chips.
TV options have increased exponentially since then but TV user experience has not. Remotes are needed now but are not designed well. Design design design. Test test test.
April 2nd, 2026 at 11:02 am
I loved Lost in Space. We had 3-5 channels growing up, depending on which way the rabbit ears pointed. Do you remember futzing with those to try to get reception? We had/have wild blue flowers around called bachelor buttons. I go a little nuts when people call all blue birds BLUEBIRDS. We don’t have those here; they’re Steller’s Jays and they’re a nuisance. (even though they’re pretty)